


steadfast as thou art

by s0dafucker



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Gen, meditating on the weird fucked up relationship all the kids have w each other, whats the difference between platonic and sexual desire whos to say
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-04 04:57:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20465381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s0dafucker/pseuds/s0dafucker
Summary: we rejoice because the hurting is so painless / from the distance of passing cars





	steadfast as thou art

**Author's Note:**

> cw for a brief vague mention of twincest bc its the secret history and u really cant write abt camilla or charles w/o bringing it up  
its very very brief and not explicit and u could interpret it any way if u really wanted
> 
> summary is from slow hands by interpol

camilla is making herself small in the passenger seat. francis doesn't have to look to know her bottom lip is between her teeth, her feet tucked underneath her and her eyes looking straight ahead; her gaze blank, for all intents and purposes. glassy and taxidermied, to the unobtrusive observer. (or maybe just one who isn't a shade too intimate with the ways her face can turn, her eyes can cut. the downturn of her mouth that is barely visible but means something awful is stewing inside.) 

francis isn't sure where they're going. only that camilla had looked frightful when she arrived on his step, her hair unkempt and backlit by the dingy hall light in a way that was uncanny, ghostly; and she had demanded, pleaded, to go anywhere-  _ anywhere but here-  _ and so —

francis is heading for the house in the country. the most obvious place, yes, for anyone camilla is running from ( _ charles,  _ his mind whispers, though he doesn't know; it could be henry, henry who makes francis's skin prickle, now, with the stony-eyed look he'd worn on the cliffside), but the house remains under a sort of curse. a seal, yet to be broken; the last visit had been made when bunny was alive. 

(ah, bunny! everything comes back to bunny these days. it's irritating, really. he'd thought- and how foolishly, too- that he'd simply be able to put bunny out of mind. to forget the way his face had looked. (ever-increasingly, he sticks on henry: henry, whose mouth tasted like menthol, whose eyes had been startlingly clear and who he had only begun to understand when they'd murmured to each other, frenzied and dreamlike, in greek.) 

but alas, bunny is a fixture in his thoughts, a cut through his memories, a scalpel separating the two halves of his life. (and he would've loved it. to be a jesus-like figure in francis's mind, keeping time.))

camilla is white-blonde and terrifying in the passenger seat, and for some reason it's a comfort. she's a comfort. francis's fingers are shaking on the wheel and he hopes and prays that nothing dares to jump into the road, no glassy-eyed stares from within the ghastly beams of his headlights. he wouldn't be able to swerve. he wouldn't manage it. (camilla's hair dripping red. her mouth moving and no sound coming out. thorns stuck everywhere in his skin.) 

francis wants to say  _ i love you.  _ he's not sure where the urge comes from. something is swollen, in his chest and his throat. (it's awful. disgusting.)  _ i love you.  _ from somewhere within a jacket that most certainly belongs to a boy francis has kissed, camilla extracts a bottle; she passes it over without a word, and francis drinks the neck off to find it a rather agreeable scotch. 

she lights a cigarette, tosses the match out the window; the wind raises goosebumps where it shouldn't, under his shirt and coat and the nape of his neck. they're driving and it's silent and for some reason it fills francis with the desire to say something paternal, something more honest than charles can give her, something more tender than henry would ever be able to manage, but he's spared from any commitment to this feverish impulse when camilla speaks, instead; 

'have you spoken to richard?'

privately, she means, and presently francis is so preoccupied with trying to figure out why she would ask that he almost doesn't recognize the significance of the last time they spoke-

'yes,' he says, and he's very grateful she seems content to let him keep the scotch. 'i- ' he begins, and then something in him seizes; 'he seems rather taken with you, doesn't he?'

and that is the right thing to say because it is just the wrong thing. (there are candles, in the country house. long ones, in reds and pinks, wicks soft and tan. stuck in the necks of old wine bottles. camilla used to sit beside them, in armchairs next to shelves and end tables, knees pulled up to her chest; pale fingers running over the fat droplets until she found a river of wax, clear enough to be water, and francis's own fingertips would sting as she pinched at it. she'd be blistered after an hour or two.) 

her feet end up on the dashboard. her ankles porcelain and boyish in the space between her loafer and the cuff of her trouser-leg. francis sees her in glimpses; the sloping line of her nose, the strong jut of her wrist. 

'i wish i liked him more,' she says, after a silence so long that francis starts to think the subject has been dropped. 

'me too.'

and it hangs there. the ever-recurring venn diagram of francis-camilla-boy. francis and camilla and secrets like nesting dolls, opening one after the other to reveal something that belongs only to the two of them, something that exists in these invisible hours. 

(they both feel richard's eyes, the way they burn, the way he stares. francis knows what his mouth feels like. they wish they could love him, the two of them, separate and yet the same in their pitying desires. (perhaps pity isn't the word for it. francis isn't sure what he feels for richard, only that the kid's got longing written all over him in a way that even bunny must have been able to read. francis wishes he could love him properly.))

she lights another cigarette. francis allows himself to shut his eyes, just for a heartbeat, to take in the smell. (he thinks sometimes he could give up smoking if it weren't for the scent; it's endlessly intoxicating, sets his skin on edge with want.) 

the silence is choking. francis takes another long drink of scotch to avoid (or perhaps more accurate would be to postpone) a long, rambling spiel about henry, and the curious set of his jaw, the matter-of-fact way he looks at you, the barest tilt of his head; and, comparatively, the shocking (in the literal sense, like lightning, like freezing, the muscles locked and the mind gloriously blank-) carnal slope of his shoulders in his chiton, the muscles in his back, the fluttering of his pulse under francis's tongue.  _ is he always like that,  _ he wants to ask, to lighten the mood, to satisfy his own burning curiosity, to poke at something that could find them back on familiar ground. on lightly trode, forgiving ground. ground that doesn't seize the ankles of those who try to walk gentle and easy and pull them into graves with neat headstones carved with a name that no one who really knew him used.  _ tell me about fucking henry  _ except that francis worries he wouldn't be able to separate the strong body, the caretaker, the wise, sweet henry that camilla's taken to bed from the grim line of his mouth when he'd finished off bunny. (they'd gone down there together, henry and camilla, their figures in stark contrast; she in white, and he in black / her short and slight / he relaxed and easy) 

_ deerslayer.  _ charles is so unlike camilla, when you undress him. her shadow, francis thinks. her echo. (he distantly remembers musing one night, to richard, that camilla would've killed charles in the womb if the bastard hadn't been so stubborn.) they're perfect matches, if you're into that. him with a thorn for each of her wounds. her with wild eyes. (hers are clear, piercing, blue-gray-white, a dawn moon; his are fogged silver, storming.) all of them cramped into that bathroom together and yet- charles and camilla reaching and bending and stepping carefully around each other, like second nature, camilla wringing her hair out, both of them with chests marble and stomachs curving and legs thick and muscled; charles and camilla looking over each other's bodies in a way that was casual, thoughtless. barely-there. 

'i think i'm sick in the head,' she says. 

francis laughs, low and humorless. 'me too.' 

he sets the bottle in the cupholder, slapdash and crooked. she holds out the cigarette pack, questioning, and he fishes one out, and she leans over to light it. (in his peripheral, he can see her holding the match steady. letting it burn down to her fingers.)

**Author's Note:**

> francis and camilla .... dare i say the only ones who matter  
idk i wanted to explore the shit goin on post-bacchanal and post bunny dying ie the way shit has brought all of them closer together and also farther apart in romantic/sexual/platonic ways  
and maybe i'll do it more in depth one day!!! i do have a lot of thoughts  
(also i dont know any goddamn greek im a romantics kid thats why the title is keats) (ive been meaning to read the anne carson translation of the bakkhai but otherwise i dont know shit)  
if u wanna keep up w my writing bullshit/see my wips i have a twitter for that @pisswurm and if u like the secret history/that aesthetic u should check out my dark academia insta @trampledfields


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